


Broken Mirrors

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Child Abuse, Drug Use, Fallen Angel Castiel, Gen, Ghosts, Season/Series 08, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4594626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to cheer Castiel up after his fall, Dean drags him into a case that looked like a simple salt-and-burn. But as they investigate, Dean begins to realize maybe this case hits a little too close to home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote and published the first three chapters of this fic on FanFiction.net during the Season 8-Season 9 hiatus, and only finished it... well, yesterday. So now you can read it in all it's finished glory. Fair Warning: this fic is Dean and Castiel centric, but it's not a Destiel fic. Enjoy!

“SIMON!”

James Farley’s voice echoed around the house, but there was no one there to hear him. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he’d just woken up in his usual spot: the couch in front of the TV. He wouldn’t have screamed, but he noticed his beer had spilt, and fuck it if he was getting up to get some more himself. That’s what the little shit of his son was for.

“Simon!” James screamed again. “Get your ass down here, or so help me…!”

The alcoholic fog in his mind cleared enough for him to remember the little shit had been gone for a few days. James wasn’t worried. The fucking kid was probably going to stumble back the minute he ran out of the money he’d stolen from James’ night table. Oh, and how he was going to regret it; James would make sure of it.

But until then, there was nobody to fetch him his beer, so, groaning and complaining, the man stood up. This was no easy task: his size had doubled ever since the slut of his wife had run away, leaving him stranded with the little shit. James refused to cook; why do it when he could pay some bastard to bring him a pizza? When Simon had protested that that wasn’t healthy and that he wanted to eat a home-cook meal like his mother used to made, James had punched him in the mouth so he would learn to be thankful. James paid for the food, so they would eat whatever the fuck he said they’d eat.

He found the last pack of beer on the fridge, and was about to return to the couch when he heard something on the porch. He figured the fucking kid had come back, sneaking in the middle of the night, thinking James wouldn’t hear him. Well, he damn well did, and the time he was done with that ungrateful little shit, the entire block would hear him too.

“Is that you, Simon?” he asked, adopting the soft tone he sometimes used before dragging the kid out of the closet or from under the bed. He wanted his son to be a real man, not a sissy who hid instead of facing punishment.

He walked towards the hall, but it was empty. The door was still locked from the inside, like he had left it when he came home from work. Fuck it; it’d probably been a cat or something. The Lord knew they had their fair share of strays around.

James went back to the couch, and started channel surfing until he found a porn movie that looked interesting enough. He smiled to himself, and internally thanked the faggot of his next door neighbor, whose cable he had been stealing for the last five years. Not that the cocksucker needed porn anyway, right? One of these days, James was going to give him a piece of his mind about him and his disgusting lifestyle, but for now, he deserved some little fun.

He had just reached inside his boxers and was about to start enjoying himself when a loud noise startled him: it was like someone had knocked on the window; on all of the windows at the same time, to be exact. The glass was still vibrating when James got up again; his heart pounding loudly because of the effort. If some motherfucking thief wanted to come into his house and try to steal his hard-earned money, he would show him!

He found the gunshot he kept in the closet underneath the stairs, and loaded it; which was hard to accomplish: his fingers were trembling. Suddenly, the whole house seemed to be freezing, which made no sense, because they were in the middle of fucking June.

James climbed the stairs; the steps creaking under his weight. He didn’t care if the thief heard him coming. The motherfucker would know what was good once he’d put a bullet to his head. He was just a man defending his property. He imagined the bastard was probably a nigger or a spic, and he would do the world a favor by getting rid of him. No jury would convict him. In fact, they might even congratulate him.

Gloating in his imaginary heroism, he reached the top of the stairs and walked by his son’s room (Why would the thief be there? The little shit had nothing worth stealing) and kicked open the door of his, holding the shotgun next to his face. There was nothing inside, except for his untidy bed and a bunch of clothes scattered on the floor. He cursed under his breath. It was the little shit’s job to do the laundry, and if he didn’t come back, James would have to do it himself. Oh, how was Simon going to regret running away.

He closed the door, and watched his breath spiraling up under the moonlight. What was wrong with the thermostat? James was about to turn around and go check it, when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a shadow moving.

It was there for a second, and then it was gone, but James was sure he’d seen it (it never crossed his mind he wasn’t completely sober). It was the figure of a young man, not very tall – though granted; no one was very tall or big when compared to him. He raised his weapon.

“Get out o’ my house!” he yelled, and blindly fired a warning shot. The thunder deafened him for a second, but he recovered quickly, and spun on his heels, looking for the intruder. “I ain’t kidding! I will fucking kill you!”

His finger was about to pull the trigger again, when he realized he was aiming at his own reflection. The stupidly big mirror in the hallway had been his wife idea (some Feng Shui shit of sorts), and he’d never gotten around getting rid of it. The movement he thought he’d seen had probably been his own. Swearing, he let the gunshot on the floor, and put his hands on both sides of the mirror to take it down.

There was a boy standing behind him.

James stopped and turned. There was no one in the hallway, but he could have sworn he saw him: a teenage boy, tall and rather slim, looking at him from his reflection in the mirror. But he had vanished, and James was as alone as he had been a second ago. His breathing became shallower. He picked up the shotgun.

“You think you can scare me, punk?” he screamed. His voice was quivering slightly, but he convinced himself it was because the air had grown colder still. “Come on!”

And there was the boy again: standing at his left, he appeared so suddenly and silent James took a step backwards, startled. He noticed the boy’s left ear was bleeding profusely, but he didn’t even blink, piercing James with a pair of eyes that were dark and cruel.

James tried to let out another threat, another boast of how he was going to make him regret getting into his house, but his mouth had gone dry. He raised the gun, and shoot.

The bullet went right through the boy, and shattered the mirror behind him. He stood there, unharmed; his eyes now burned with a fiery hate that terrified James. Too late, the man understood he should have run.

The boy took a step towards him, and James Farley started screaming.

But then again, there was no one in the house to hear him.


	2. Broken Mirrors

Castiel couldn’t quite believe Dean had convinced him of doing this. But, of course, Dean had once persuaded him to rebel against everything he believed in, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise the hunter could manipulate him into anything.

“Come on, Cas, this’ll be good for you,” he had told the fallen angel. “You need to get out of this bunker, get around a bit…”

“Why would I leave just to come right back, Dean?”

Dean sighed, and Castiel could almost see his patience draining out. “I mean do something besides moping and brooding in your room.”

Castiel still wasn’t sure what his friend would have him do, so he just stared in silence until Dean felt the need to elaborate.

“Look, this case sounds like a simple salt and burn,” he said, pointing at the newspaper he had been scanning earlier. “Nothing too big. It’s perfect to get you started in the business.”

Castiel begged to differ. He was pretty certain he would be more of a hindrance than a help, even if it was a simple “salt and burn”, so he turned to Sam for support. The younger Winchester was barely discernible beneath the three covers Dean insisted he needed.

“Please, go on the hunt with him,” Sam pleaded. “He’s going to drive us all insane.”

“Word,” said Kevin; his voice muffled by the heavy bandages he had to wear on his face.

It wasn’t just doubt in his abilities that was holding Castiel back. Just the previous week, they’d had a clash with a group of very angry angels that were trying to assassinate Castiel. They had escaped (only just), and Sam and Kevin had ended heavily wounded. Dean had been taking care of them, while Castiel locked himself in his room, convinced he was the cause of all his friends’ problems, and getting a load on the fact that his family wanted him dead. But that morning, Dean had barged in through the door, dragged him to the kitchen so he could have some decent breakfast with everybody, and was now trying to convince him that all he needed to cheer up was a nice little hunt.

Castiel was starting to wonder if Dean was the people expert he once thought him to be.

“Come on, Cas, you can ride shotgun!”

“I am certain you are perfectly capable of handling this case on your own, Dean.”

And that was when Dean had shot him “the look”. Castiel considered himself a bit of a specialist in Dean Winchester’s expressions (given that he’d raised the man from hell and basically reconstructed his body from scratch), and he knew that when Dean frowned like that, pursed his lips, and lowered his shoulders as if he was gathering enough air to enter a screaming contest with a banshee; it meant that the hunter was getting really mad, but he was containing everything he wanted to say because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. The former angel raised his hands, as if he was trying to stop the avalanche of Dean’s rage.

“My shooting skills are still poor, my sleeping cycle continues to be out of order, and as you keep reminding me, cop shows are not proper research on how to conduct an interrogation,” he explained. “I would make a very low quality hunter.”

“But that’s just the point, Cas,” said Dean. “How are you going to improve if you don’t practice?”

“Please, Cas,” Sam insisted. “Get him off our backs for a few days.”

In the end, Castiel caved in, and found himself on the way to Waterham, Missouri. It was only a few hours’ drive and Dean decided it would be a good idea to spend that time broadening Castiel’s taste in human music by blasting out the noisiest of his classic rock collection and singing along enthusiastically. Castiel didn’t have the heart to tell him he was getting a headache from all those guitars and drums.

Because, after all, Dean would just persuade him to keep listening.

 

* * *

 

“Let me do the talking,” said Dean, when they arrived at the town’s police department. “I’m agent James Page, this is agent John Boham,” Dean introduced them, flashing his fake badge in front of the first officer that came their way. “We are here about…”

“The murders?” the officer completed. “Yes, was about time you guys show up.”

“Murders?” Dean repeated. “There has been more than one?”

The officer sighed heavily, like he thought Dean was playing with him in order to waste his time. “Let me call Detective Martinez.”

Detective Martinez turned out to be a middle aged woman, with a severe expression and an even more severe bum of black hair. Her desk was overcrowded by folders and pictures. The woman herself seemed a bit overcrowded, with big earrings that almost grazed her shoulders, a prominent nose and a fainted scar surrounding her neck. Dean was reminded of the least friendly Math teacher he’d had.

“I’m sorry, agents,” she yawned. “These cases had been keeping me up.”

Like they couldn’t see that in the big violet circles under her eyes, and the several plastic cups scattered around her desk. Dean felt a shot of compassion for the poor woman.

“Tell us what you think, detective,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Detective Martinez. “The man last night… this psycho’s escalating.”

“Why don’t we start from the beginning?” Dean suggested while he and Castiel sat in front of her desk.

“Right, of course,” she said, and opened one of the folders for them to see.

In the last six months, three men had been murdered. Amos Stern and Norman Stiles presented clear marks of taking a beating before having their throats slit. In both cases, the murder weapon came from a piece of mirrors already present at the house. There were no signs of forced entry, no DNA, no prints, nothing for the police to keep investigating in either of the murder scenes. That only confirmed Dean’s theory that they were dealing with a particularly bloodthirsty ghost.

“And then two days ago, we found James Farley,” Detective Martinez handed them a third folder. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There was blood everywhere.”

Dean understood her shivering as soon as he saw the pictures. Farley had not only been beaten, he had been carefully dismembered and practically decapitated.

“You sure this is the same guy?” he asked Detective Martinez while Castiel analyzed the photos with his usual frown.

“This looks far more gruesome than the previous ones,” the former angel pointed.

“We are sure,” Detective Martinez sighed. “The weapon used to mutilate Farley was a mirror shard.”

She glared at them like she was defying them to tell her that had to be some kind of mistake. Farley had obviously been a pretty heavy guy, and even if he hadn’t, you needed a weapon sharper and bigger than a piece of mirror to cause all that damage. Dean didn’t even try to argue. Detective Martinez seemed like a competent woman who had taken all of that into consideration, found no way of making sense of it, and just given up to the facts. And besides, a ghost could certainly pull that kind of thing.

“There is another link between the victims,” said the detective once it was clear none of them was going to contradict her. She pulled another folder for them to see. “This is what I was originally investigating.”

Dean shifted in his seat, uneasy. Detective Martinez had just handed them the picture of a seven year old girl, with pony tails and uneven teeth. He hated when kids were involved.

“This is Missy Stern,” she told them. “She’s the granddaughter of Amos Stern, the first victim. Missy is the daughter of a single mom who works two jobs, so Amos was her primary caretaker. She went missing a week before the murder. We thought the incidents were isolated… until the Harrow twins went missing too.”

She presented them a second photograph, this one with a boy and a girl holding hands and refusing to smile at the camera. Dean calculated they must be around nine or ten years old.

“Any relationship with Stiles?” he asked.

“They were his stepchildren,” Detective Martinez explained. “There was a pretty ugly divorce going on before the kids disappeared. Same thing: a week later, Norman gets the mirror.”

“And Farley?” asked Dean. “He had a kid too?”

Detective Martinez took out a third picture. This was different than the others: while Missy and the Harrows had obviously been photographed by their parents, the Farley kid (Simon, the detective told them) had just one of those obligatory pictures for school. He was eleven years old.

“We didn’t know Simon was gone,” Detective Martinez said. “It was pretty common that he was absent at school, and James Farley never reported him missing.”

“Why wouldn’t he report his son missing?” asked Castiel.

 

* * *

 

“Because he was an ASSHOLE!”

Both Dean and Castiel jumped in their seats, surprised that such a small guy as James Farley’s neighbor could yell that loud. His boyfriend held his hand.

“We’re sorry, agents,” he said. “I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but Farley was…”

“An asshole,” said the neighbor. Ethan, Dean remembered. His name was Ethan Something.

“Okay,” said Dean. “Could you be more specific about the nature of his… uhm…?” he looked at Castiel looking for help. The angel always seemed to have the right word anyway.

“Assholery?” Castiel tried.

Or maybe not.

“Oh, where do I start?” Ethan rolled his eyes. “He stole my cable, he would take out the trash at the wrong hours, he didn’t recycle, he was rude and vulgar, and don’t even get me started about his homophobic and racist slurs.”

“And what about the kid?” asked Dean.

The two men looked at each other with a sad expression on their faces.

“We should have done more to help him,” said Kyle, the boyfriend.

“Poor Simon. I used to see him sitting in the porch, all alone,” Ethan said. “He used to tell me about his mom and how she had promised to come to look for him one day. Well, that was before Farley forbade him to talk to me because he didn’t want him to catch ‘my faggotry.’” He drew finger quotes in the air, obviously resented.

“Was he abusive towards Simon?” Dean asked.

“We supposed he was,” said Kyle. “We called Child Services a couple of times when we heard him scream. We know they took him away at least once.”

Dean nodded. That coincided with what Detective Martinez had told them.

“But it didn’t stand,” Ethan said. “Farley showed them how much he loved his son, how he was trying to be better for him… two weeks later, the boy was back, and James was back to being an asshole.”

Dean nodded again. The story sounded strangely familiar to him.

“We didn’t notice Simon was missing because we were busy with the moving,” Kyle continued, pointing at the boxes piled up everywhere around the house. “If we have known…”

By the way they spoke; Dean deduced the two of them assumed Simon was dead. Not that he could blame them. Not many angry spirits snatched children to keep them alive.

“Tell me about the night of the murder. You said you heard a shooting around two in the morning,” said Dean. “But you didn’t report it right the way.”

“Well, you know, sometimes Farley would get drunk and start shooting at cans in the yard,” Ethan said. He obviously disapproved of the use of guns. “We only called when we heard him scream. I thought the moron had finally and literally shot himself in the foot.”

“That is weird, though,” Kyle frowned. “The police arrived, but they couldn’t get inside. All the doors were locked…”

“No, not locked, more like… stuck,” said Ethan. “The officers tried to kick it open, several times, but they wouldn’t open. All the time, Farley kept screaming for help.” The man quivered. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel exactly sorry that he’s dead, but…”

“It… sounded pretty awful,” Kyle contributed.

“And then, what happened?”

“Then… Farley stopped screaming, and a second later, the door opened,” said Ethan. “It was the weirdest thing.”

“Alright, well, I think we have everything we need,” said Dean, standing up. Castiel followed his lead.

“Thank you for your time,” he said.

“Not at all, agents.”

“Well, that _is_ weird,” said Dean once they were back in the Impala. “Everything points towards an angry spirit but…”

“What kind of spirit kidnaps children?” Castiel completed.

“And what’s the deal with the mirrors?” asked Dean. “It’s like a Rawhead and Bloody Mary had a love child.”

Castiel gave him a confused look. “How is it possibly for spirits to reproduce?”

Dean let out a chuckle. Cas could be irritating with his tendency to take everything literally, but sometimes it could be a good laugh, and that was exactly what Dean needed. He _really_ hated it when kids were involved.

“I don’t know, Cas, but it’s definitely worth sticking around,” he said. “I’ll put Sam and Kevin to investigate; you and I can call it a night.”

 

* * *

 

Of course, the last thing Dean did was call it a night.

Once they found a mildly decent motel on the outskirts of town, and Castiel could finally remove his fed clothes (How did he never notice suits were so itchy?), he sat down on the bed to watch some TV, but Dean turned on his laptop and started typing something. Then he stopped typing, and ate one of the hamburgers they had bought on the way, while still staring at the screen. Then he finished the hamburger, but continued to stare at the screen.

Castiel didn’t need his old powers to know that Dean probably had the police reports and the pictures of the missing children on display. As still as the hunter was, his mind was probably a swarm of ideas, trying to find something the police had overlooked, looking for the connection between the victims. He knew it was better not to disturb Dean when he was thinking, but he couldn’t help to worry. It was rare to see his friend this quiet.

“Hey, Dean,” he called him. “That… that movie that you like is on… the one with the spaceships…”

“Yeah, that’s great, Cas,” Dean mumbled, without paying attention.

That was a bad sign. Usually, Dean would have jumped at the opportunity to lecture Castiel about the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. Castiel at least knew the first one was the one with the alien Dean said was a lot like him.

“I do not truly see the resemblance,” he told Dean, but obtained no response. He turned back to the TV and tilted his head. “I do not possess pointy ears…”

“Cas, could you please…?!” Dean snapped. The fallen angel fell silent, and Dean rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry, Cas. I just, uh… I need to figure this one out. We can watch the movie later, okay?”

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel said, lowering his tone.

Dean turned back to the screen, and ignored him for the rest of the night. Castiel watched the movie (turning the volume as low as he could), and by the end of it, he was a little dizzy from all the lens flare. When the credit started rolling, he turned off the TV and looked back at Dean. He hadn’t moved an inch.

“I am going to bed,” Castiel announced. Dean groaned as to indicate that he had heard him. “Are you… planning to sleep?”

“Yeah, in a minute,” Dean muttered.

Castiel knew that meant he wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

Amanda Miller was having a bad night. First, David, the moron she had for a boyfriend, had screamed at her that she was a bad mother. But how could he know? He was never around anyway. And besides, it wasn’t her fault if Gary decided to run away in the middle of the night to go with his friends. Yeah, she roughed him up a bit, broke a plate on his head, or two. The brat had it coming for calling her a junkie whore. She was not a whore.

Then, Martin had told her he couldn’t sell her anything, that she owed him too much money. Amanda had thrown a fit, but her dealer remained indifferent. At the end of it, he had grabbed her by the arm (Amanda might or might not have tried to scratch his eye out) and kicked her out of his house. She continued to yell at the closed door, but to no avail. When her throat started aching, she left. Well, screw Martin. He had just lost himself a client.

At least that was what she was thinking when she returned to her apartment, but then David started making a fuss about Gary’s whereabouts and something about a murderer who kidnapped kids loose on the town. Amanda had asked him why he had to speak so loudly, and that’s when David had stormed out, after declaring she was a lost cause, and that he was going to take Gary (as soon as he found him) and dumped her ass once and for all. Well, good riddance to both of them. She never wanted to have the brat anyway.

What Amanda needed desperately was a little bit of peace. And a fix. Was that really too much to ask?

She knew there was no point in searching through David’s pockets or his usual stashes. The bastard didn’t leave money lying around anymore. It was like he didn’t trust her. But, wait, didn’t Gary have one of those red moneyboxes? Yeah. She could pick the lock and take what she found. Maybe add a bit of cash from something she could pawn. It would convince Martin to sell her at least a small fix.

She went into Gary’s room and sure enough, she found the box on the desk. It was really light, but she could hear the handful of coins rolling inside. Of course it would be light. Why would the brat want money anyway?

She went into the bathroom to look for a hairpin, and almost dropped the box. Her hands were shaking. All of her was shaking. She assumed it was because her last fix had been too many days ago. She didn’t notice any particular change in the apartment’s temperature.

Not until her fingertips were too unsteady to work the hairpin, anyway. What was wrong with the heating? And who turned out the lights? Mrs. Trevor (that old bitch) had probably cut their electricity again. In any case, it was too dark to see in the bathroom now. Amanda straightened up, and noticed the bathroom mirror had gotten all foggy. She wiped it with her sleeve, and almost didn’t see the teenage boy with the bleeding ear standing behind her.

She let out a bloodcurdling scream right before the mirror shattered.


	3. The Runaways

Dean was growing too old for this shit.

He had that thought at least twice a month lately, and it was particularly strong when he stayed awake for the whole night, like he had that day.

He had been shot, bitten, stabbed and killed more times that he could count. He had watched his brother being shot, bitten, stabbed and killed more times that he liked to remembered. He had saved more than his fair share of lives. He had hunted more than enough things that went bump in the night. He had been through Hell and Purgatory and lost more friends than it was healthy for anybody’s sanity. He had stopped the fucking Apocalypse, for crying out loud!

Sometimes he wondered what stopped him from settling somewhere nice (the bunker counted as somewhere nice, especially now that Sam had planted that little garden on the entrance). Why he kept scanning the newspapers, looking for a clue of supernatural activity. Why he stayed neck deep in the petty feud (he couldn’t call it a war anymore, not with the ridiculous proportions it had taken lately) between angels and demons.

Why he was awake at the crack of dawn, functioning on three cups of coffee Castiel had so gently gotten him, standing in a bathroom with the walls painted in blood, and looking at the lifeless body of a poor woman, murdered by an angry spirit.

He was too old for this shit.

“The victim’s name is Amanda Miller. Mrs. Trevor, the landlady, heard her scream around three in the morning,” Detective Martinez was telling them. She too looked like she hadn’t slept a wink. Despite the warm weather, she was wearing a scarf around her neck, perhaps to find the scar Dean had noticed the day before. “She called the police right away. The body was still warm when they found her.”

Like James Farley, Amanda had been savagely mutilated. Her arms and wrists were cut wide open, and her neck was bent backwards in an odd angle. Her blonde hair (Dean assumed it was blonde, it was hard to tell from all the dried blood) hanged right outside the bathtub where the son of a bitch had laid her. There were mirror shards everywhere.

“Why is this moneybox here?” Castiel asked, pointing curiously at the red box in the sink. Strangely, Dean had a pang of nostalgia. He used to have a moneybox just like that one when he was a kid.

“Did she have a kid?” Dean asked, suddenly.

“Gary Cooper, thirteen,” Detective Martinez said. “His father…”

“Oh, my God!” somebody screamed from the door. “What happened?!”

“We’ll talk to him,” Dean offered, and made a sign to Castiel.

The man sitting in the couch was about the same age as Amanda, and he was pale and hyperventilating while a police officer tried to calm him down.

“Mr. Cooper, I’m Agent Page,” Dean said, flashing his badge in front of the man (not that he would notice, in the state he was in). “We need to ask you some questions…”

“Is that lunatic, isn’t he?” Cooper asked, raising his bloodshot eyes at Dean. “He took my boy, and now he killed Amanda!”

“Let’s start from the beginning,” Dean said, using his most calming voice. “When did you first notice Gary was gone?”

“Just last night,” Cooper said. “I’m a trucker; I spend a lot of time on the road. I came home, and Gary was gone, and Amanda was having a bad case of cold turkey. We argued, and I left…”

“I can vouch for Mr. Cooper,” Detective Martinez intervened. “He went to the police station to report his son missing.”

“Please, you have to find him!” Cooper begged them, standing up and grabbing Dean’s arm forcefully. “He’s only thirteen!”

“Alright, well…”

“This doesn’t look like a place where a child lives,” Castiel said. Dean turned to look at the former angel, who was scanning the room with a frown. “There are no pictures of him, nothing that would indicate his presence here…”

Dean was going to tell him maybe that wasn’t the best time to bring that up, but Mr. Cooper bowed his head, like he was ashamed.

“I got Amanda pregnant when we weren’t even out of high school. She didn’t want to have the baby, but I convinced her I would take care of them both, but she always… I don’t know, maybe she resented him or something. She and Gary fight… fought a lot,” he said. “Sometimes she was violent towards him. He spends a lot of time in his room…”

Something clicked inside Dean’s head. “Mr. Cooper, the red moneybox…?”

“That’s where Gary keeps all his savings,” Cooper said.

Dean turned away from the man, and walked back into the bathroom. “Let me see that thing,” he asked one of the forensics. The box was light, and when he shook it, he could only hear some coins clattering inside. “There’s almost nothing left,” he said, to no one in particular.

“Why does it matter?” Detective Martinez said. “The mom was an addict; she probably stole it…”

“No, no, she didn’t,” Dean interrupted her. Suddenly, he felt the overdose of caffeine he had ingested earlier kicking in. “She was trying to, that’s why it was in the bathroom. But Gary was smarter than that; he knew his mom was a junkie. He wouldn’t have left the box anywhere she could find, unless…”

“Unless he didn’t care if she found it,” Detective Martinez finished his thought. “Bring me some gloves and something to pick this lock,” she told one of the officers.

Before they open it and ascertain there were was only a handful of coins left, Dean already knew they weren’t going to find any important amount of money.

“Gary took it with him,” he said.

“But he was abducted,” said Castiel, confused.

“No, no, he wasn’t,” replied Dean. “He took the money he had been saving for a while. The spir… I mean, the kidnapper wouldn’t have left him take it if he’d had to force Gary to go with him. Which means…”

“He somehow convinced Gary to run away,” said Detective Martinez, her face lightening up as she finally started to see a break in the case. “He isn’t snatching these kids…”

“He’s rescuing them,” Dean completed. “He’s rescuing them from their abusers.”

“But the only confirmed cases of abuses we’ve had are Gary and Simon,” Detective Martinez argued.

“Well, maybe you need to take a deeper look at the others,” Dean pointed. “My partner and I are going to interrogate some witnesses. We’ll be in touch in case there’s any further development.”

He turned around and left the apartment without waiting for Detective Martinez’s answer. Castiel had to run to keep his pace.

“Which witnesses are we going to interrogate now?” he asked.

“None,” said Dean, practically ripping the tie from his neck as he opened the door of the Impala. “We’re done playing feds. I think I know who our vengeful spirit is.”

 

* * *

 

“We were getting nowhere investigating the first victim,” Dean explained to Castiel once they were back in the motel. “So I asked Sam to widen the search to all the missing children within the last year.”

“The murders started six months ago, yes?” Sam’s voice came from the phone’s speaker, while Dean started piling up the printed articles his brother had sent him. “Well, _nine_ months ago, two other kids disappeared, only Detective Martinez didn’t include them in her report because nobody died… except someone did.”

“I’m not following,” said Castiel, as he watched Dean pace around the motel room, barely able to contain his excitement at all the progress they were making. “Who died?”

“The kids’ mother,” Dean said, pulling an article with the picture of a smiling woman next to a crashed car for Castiel to see.

“Laura Bloom,” Sam continued to explain from the phone. “She died in a car accident, eight years ago. Her two kids, a boy, ten, and a girl, six; were in the accident, and the girl told one of the reporters they had gone out of the road because their parents were arguing. Some people speculated maybe the dad hit her, but nothing could be proven.”

“So the two kids who first disappeared,” said Castiel, starting to ginger up. “Are her children?”

“George and Emily Bloom,” said Dean, proudly presenting Castiel with another set of photographs. “Now, eighteen and fourteen.”

He stood there, maybe expecting Castiel to congratulate him for being able to join the dots so quickly, but Castiel still had doubts.

“So you’re thinking Laura’s spirit took them away?” Castiel asked. “Because their father was also abusive towards them? Why now?”

Dean shrugged. “Must have taken her all these years to finally gain enough strength and rage to murder someone,” he suggested.

“But what about the mirrors?” the former angel pointed. “That doesn’t fit the way she died, or…”

“I dunno,” Dean said, visibly growing impatient. “Maybe the broken mirrors in the car were the last thing she saw or something like that.”

“No, Cas is right,” said Sam. “It doesn’t quite fit, Dean.”

“Look, we’ve got her,” Dean groaned. “Now all we have to do is find out more things about her se we know where she took the kids.”

“If they’re still alive,” Sam pointed.

“ _Of course_ they’re still alive!” Dean shouted. “She’s a mother. She was trying to save them. She wouldn’t have hurt them!”

Castiel shot him a skeptical look, and Dean was sure that if Sam had been there, he’d done the same.

“Don’t argue with me here,” Dean told them, annoyed at their lack of faith in his hunch. “Laura Bloom’s gotta be the angry spirit.”

“Dean…”

“We’re going to go talk to her husband right now,” Dean decided, putting on his coat again.

“Dean…”

“But I’ll eat my Baby if we find him alive. Laura probably offed him, but nobody reported him since nobody would miss him…”

“Dean…”

“What, Cas?!” Dean snapped. “You have a better plan?”

“No,” Castiel admitted. “I was just going to say we’ll need the badges for that.”

“Oh,” said Dean, looking at the badge Castiel was handing him. “Yes. Well thought, Cas.”

The fallen angel gave him a half smile. If he had been a dog, he probably would have waved his tail lazily to show how please he was with himself.

“Alright, we’ll wrap this up quickly,” Dean told Sam. “You rest. There’s still some soup in the fridge, if you two gluttons hadn’t finished it. And don’t forget to change Kevin’s bandages!”

“Yes, Dean,” Sam said, and Dean could practically see him rolling his eyes before hanging up.

“Well, let’s roll,” Dean ordered, already marching towards the door. Castiel took a couple of seconds to follow him, and Dean couldn’t help to notice his smile had become a little stiff and forced. “Okay, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” said Castiel, getting inside the Impala. “I just, uh… I just really hope you’re right.”

Dean hoped he was right too. Because he was certain no other spirit would keep the children alive. Not for a good cause, at least. He pushed those thoughts to the back of his head as they sped through the town.

 

* * *

 

Castiel really wished Dean didn’t mean it when he said he was going to eat his car. He was sure it wasn’t humanly possible; not to mention highly inconvenient, transportation wise.

They discovered not only was Laura Bloom’s husband alive, and living in a small house with a neat garden in the nicest part of town, he also seemed like a fairly decent man who would never raise a hand to his children. In fact, Harold Bloom was so skinny and short (and looked even more so thanks to his wrinkled sweater vest, his oversized trousers and his little spectacles) Castiel doubted he had the necessary strength to hit anybody.

“Oh, God,” he exclaimed when they showed him their fake badges, authentic concern in his face. “Do you have news about my kids?”

“Can we talk inside?” Dean asked. Mr. Bloom let them in with a gesture. “When was the last time you saw them?”

“October 31st,” Mr. Bloom told them, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes. “They were too old to go trick or treating, but they said they’d be ‘hanging out’ with some friends. They never made it to the party.”

“I see,” Dean said. Castiel could tell he was pretty irritated his hunch was wrong, so the fallen angel started pacing around the room while the hunter continued with the routine questions. “This may sound strange to you, but have you heard any strange noises in the house? Maybe sudden drops of temperature?”

“Well… the heating broke down in January…”

Castiel stopped his pacing in front of a library full of books alphabetically ordered, and portraits spread across the shelves. The crystals looked like they have been obsessively dusted, and the pictures followed a chronological order: on the top shelves there were Emily and George, as babies and toddlers, and the following ones had them eating mashed potatoes, showing their missing teeth, playing in the garden, going to school, opening presents. They both had the same dirty blond hair as their father.

Castiel noticed there were no more photos of George after the one where he was shown unwrapping a red racing bike, at age nine or ten. The following ones were all of Emily: smiling at the camera with her hazel eyes shining, holding a silver medal with the school athletic team, in a group hug with two other friends, hiking in the woods around town, her hair hidden under a blue cap.

There were no pictures of Laura.

Castiel frowned. Why did that seem important? He turned to point that out to Dean, but the hunter was getting, as they said, all worked up, and Mr. Bloom looked equally irritated.

“Look, I’m just a small town English teacher, desperate to know what happened to my children,” he was saying.

“And that’s exactly what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Bloom,” Dean answered, unable to hide his anger. “So if you could please answer my questions honestly…”

“I _am_ being honest! I don’t understand what my wife’s death has to do with anything!”

Castiel resumed his saunter, uncertain if he should intervene, when something caught his eye. Hanging on the wall across the book shelves, there was a big mirror with a golden frame. For what he had seen, Mr. Bloom was very circumspect with the cleaning – in fact, everything in the living room and the garden was immaculate and in their right place, to the point of it all being just a little bit unnerving.

But not the mirror. Somehow, it was a little bit off. Castiel had to take a step closer and kneel in front of it to realize exactly why.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?” Mr. Bloom asked. He sounded goaded.

“The mirror is smaller,” Castiel explained.

“Come again?” Dean asked, arching an eyebrow.

“There used to be another mirror here,” said Castiel, sliding his fingers right beneath the mirror’s frame. “One that was slightly larger, and hanged in this spot for years. This one is almost the same side, but not exactly. It doesn’t cover all the marks in the paper wall.”

“That is nonsense! It is the same mirror I’ve always had!” Mr. Bloom shouted, in full on fury. “I don’t understand what that has anything to do with my kids! In fact, what kind of FBI agents are you?”

“Calm down, Mr. Bloom,” Dean tried to say.

“I’d like you to leave now!”

Castiel knew that was a clear cue to make a retreat, so he hurriedly followed Dean back to the car before Mr. Bloom could make any more threats.

“He did it,” said Dean as soon as they closed the doors of the Impala. Castiel could almost feel the fury radiating from his body.

“But he’s alive,” the fallen angel protested.

“Well, he did _something_ ,” said Dean. “He was all defensive while I was asking about Laura, and did you notice how he never called his children by their names? I’m telling you; he’s our guy!”

Castiel said nothing, and Dean almost exploded.

“Don’t give me that look, Cas!” he shouted. “Just because he looked like Mr. I’m-All-Innocent with his glasses and his sweater vest it doesn’t mean…!”

“I think you’re right,” said Castiel.

“Of course I’m right, why would you…?” Dean started; then stopped in his tracks. “Wait, you really think so?

“I believe the way he acted at the simple mention of the mirror was, as you would say, an overreaction,” said Castiel. “That’s usually an indicator of a guilty conscience.”

“Well, you got that right…”

“However, I am… concerned,” Castiel continued, choosing his words even more carefully than usual. “About you, Dean.”

“When are you not?” Dean groaned, as they turned around the town’s square.

“You have been increasingly on edge since yesterday,” Castiel pointed. “And I’m afraid it will prompt you to act recklessly.”

“Come on, Cas, when have I ever done that?” Dean asked, as he moved to the right to give way to a boy in a red bicycle.

Castiel stared at him, hesitating. “Do you want me to answer in historical order or by the gravity of the consequences your actions entailed?”

Dean opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then closed it. After a few seconds, he forced himself to answer: “Okay, you might have a point.”

“It is a rather long list,” Castiel commented.

“Got it!” said Dean, parking in front of the police station. “I’m just going to talk to Detective Martinez, and then we are going to go back to keep an eye on Bloom. Not recklessly. From across the street.”

“I will get us something to eat, then,” Castiel decided, exiting the car too. “I’ve noticed you tend to be more relaxed when on a full stomach.”

“You do that,” Dean sighed.

Castiel walked down the block, towards the mini market they had passed earlier. He almost stumbled against the red bike that had been carelessly stationed on the door, so his entrance was less than graceful, but there was no one to notice but the boy in the black cap and the boring looking cashier, who was too busy chewing gum and passing the pages of a magazine.

It had taken Castiel a while to learn how to walk down the aisles without knocking something over and chose the products within his budget. Now he was almost used to it, and shopping was one of the things he could do to actually help around the bunker.

He had just spotted the last package of chocolate chip muffins (he had just found out that they were out of pie), and went to grab it when, just his luck, the only other costumer in the store, the boy with the black cap, went to do the same.

They eyed each other from the distance, neither of them willing to let go. It suddenly occurred to Castiel that he knew this boy, but he couldn’t be sure of where he had seen him before.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. His voice was rather soft. “I need this for my brother.”

“But you already have the orange muffins,” Castiel pointed, after taking a look at the boy’s cart.

“Yes, this is for my other brother,” said the boy. “They don’t like the same kind of muffins.”

Castiel released the package with a sigh. Dean would have to conform himself with cookies.

“Thank you, sir,” said the boy and turned around to pay for his groceries.

And just as he did, a long lock of dirty blonde hair escaped his cap. And suddenly Castiel realized the cap wasn’t black, it was just very dirty. And at the same time, he realized he _did_ know who this boy was.

“Emily?” he called. She froze, and shot him a terrified look with her hazel eyes wide open. Castiel had no more doubts. “You’re Emily Bloom…”

Fast as lightning, Emily threw her cart at Castiel’s chest (the groceries spilling everywhere, the fallen angel clashing against the shelves, and thus ruining his record of shopping without knocking something down), and flew across the door towards the red bike. Castiel recovered as quickly as he could, and ignoring the screaming and complaints from the cashier, he dashed after Emily.

The girl saw him, quitted fighting the padlock of her bike and just sprinted down the street.

“Hey!” Castiel screamed. “Wait!”

Emily was zigzagging fast, but Castiel managed not to lose her among the shocked bystanders that barely had time to move out of their way. Emily turned around a corner, and slipped inside an alley, but before she could climb the fence, Castiel was practically hovering over her.

“Wait!” he said. “I just want to…”

He didn’t finish the phrase. All words seemed to have scrambled out of his brain. A part of him realized he was paralyzed, yet there was a slight tremor on his knees. Not for the first time since he was human, Castiel experienced a sear of panic, but it was much more shocking because of the suddenness of it.

Emily had pulled out a gun, and the barrel was aiming straight at his face.


	4. Monsters and Ghosts

“Stand back!” Emily demanded. Castiel supposed she wanted to sound threatening, but her voice came out trembling and insecure.

“Emily…” he tried to say.

“Don’t move!” she said, holding the gun with both hands. “I’ll… I’ll shoot you, I will…!”

Castiel didn’t say anything. He stared at the girl, confused, but no longer scared. The Emily standing in front of him had, indeed, little to do with the one he’d seen in the pictures at her father’s house. Her eyes looked too big for her face, like she had lost a lot of weight; an impression heightened by the baggy, shapeless man’s sweater she was wearing. There was some dirt on her cheek, and her lips were chapped and faded. All around, she looked unkempt and grubby, and the fallen angel couldn’t help but to feel a twinge of sympathy towards her.

“Emily, please, put the gun down,” he asked her.

“No!” she shouted. “No, you’re a cop! You’re going to take me back!”

“Back to where?” he asked. Before Emily could answer, he heard footsteps hurriedly approaching from behind him.

“Cas!” Dean’s voice called him, and Emily raised her weapon a little higher.

“Stay where you are!” she said.

“Okay, okay,” Dean came to a halt right next to Castiel. “Take it easy.”

“I’m not going back!” said Emily. Her voice was broken, and her hands were shaking slightly. “I’m not…!”

“Okay,” said Dean. “That’s okay; you don’t have to go back.”

That seemed to surprise Emily.

“I-I don’t…?” she stuttered.

“No, not at all,” said Dean, and took a small step towards her. “I promise. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

After a split second of hesitation, Emily raised the gun again. “You’re lying!”

“I’m not,” Dean assured her. “I’m not lying, I promise.”

He took another step, and Emily froze for a second before pointing at Dean… but the hunter disarmed her with one fluid movement. The gun hit the floor with a thump, and Dean kicked it out of reach.

“No!” Emily screamed, struggling against Dean’s firm grip. “Let me go!”

“It’s okay, Emily, it’s okay,” Dean kept saying while he led her outside the alley. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Castiel caught a glimpse of Detective Martinez and another police officer waiting for them next to a car patrol. Emily paralyzed when she came to the realization there was no chance of escaping. She stopped fighting and let Dean and the officer gently push her inside the car.

Detective Martinez told Dean something. The hunter nodded, and remained in his spot until the car with Emily left. Castiel approached his friend, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Dean?” he called.

“They’re taking her to the hospital,” Dean said. “We’ll meet them there,” he added and strode up to the Impala without checking if Castiel was following him. He was practically steaming, and Castiel suddenly felt like he needed to explain himself.

“I saw her in the store,” he said, while Dean started the car. “I ran after her, I never thought she would…”

“Well, you should have thought!” Dean shouted. “What if she had been something really dangerous? You’re not invulnerable anymore, Cas!”

“Dean,” said Castiel. “She is just a little girl. And she was frightened.”

Dean took a deep breath, and all anger seemed to leave his body. “I know,” he said. “But _what_ is she scared of?”

 

* * *

 

“The wallet she was carrying has the initials ‘GC’ embroidered, and the gun is registered to James Farley, our third victim,” Detective Martinez informed them once they reached the hospital. “It was missing from his collection along with several boxes of bullets.”

Dean rubbed his eyes, feeling a massive headache growing inside his skull. “What the hell was she doing with that?”

“I don’t know,” Detective Martinez said, unable to hide her concern. “She’s slightly malnourished and dehydrated, and she won’t tell anybody where she’s been or who she’s been with. It doesn’t look good.”

The phrase, said almost offhandedly, hit something inside Dean’s aching brain.

“Wait, you’re not implying…?” he started, but Detective Martinez’s expression stopped him in his tracks. “You don’t really think she had something to do with the murders!”

“Well, what am I supposed to think, agent?” she asked. Her tone of voice was practically begging him to tell her otherwise. “She and her brother went missing before the spree began, but now she shows up with Farley’s gun and Gary Cooper’s wallet… if she’s not involved in this murder spree, she is protecting someone who is.”

Dean thought the detective might have a point there, but swallowed those words. What was he going to say? That the girl was protecting her mother’s angry ghost?

“Let me try,” Dean volunteered. “I might be able to get her to talk.”

Detective Martinez shrugged, but Dean could see the growing desperation behind her eyes. He turned around, and found Castiel coming back from the coffee machine with a couple of cups. Dean felt guilty for the way he had yelled at him, but there would be time to make amends later.

“Cas, I need you to do something for me,” he said, and he explained in detail what he wanted before heading for Emily’s room.

The girl was lying in bed, pale and visibly annoyed at the serum dripping next to her. Her eyes were fixed on the TV with a rather vacant stare, and she didn’t turn around to look at Dean when he entered.

“Hi, Emily, I’m Dean,” he said, and sat on the chair next to her. “What are you watching?”

She gave no signs of acknowledging Dean’s presence, so the hunter tilted his head to get a better look at the screen.

“Harry Potter, huh?” he said. “My lil’ brother loves those movies. The big dork.”

Emily shifted a little, and Dean was pretty sure she was looking at him now, but he still didn’t turn to her.

“My dad used to say he was the smart one,” he continued. “But to be the smart one, he was always getting in trouble. Sometimes I felt like he was doing it on purpose, because he knew I’d always be there to watch his back…”

He stopped talking when Castiel walked in, carrying a plastic bag.

“Here’s what you requested, Dean,” he said, in a rather low voice. It was like watching a kicked puppy trying to approach his master, and again, Dean made a mental note to apologize to him later.

“Why, thank you, Cas,” he said, opening the bag and taking out the biggest chocolate bar he could find. “You want one?”

“Sam says that kind of food is not healthy for my teeth or my stomach,” said Castiel.

“Oh, come on, what’s one chocolate gonna do?” Dean insisted.

After a moment of inner struggle, Castiel extended his hand and took the bar. He peeled it off very slowly, and took a tentative bite.

“So how’s that?”

“It is… rather tasty,” Castiel admitted, and took another bite, this one much larger. Dean smiled and turned his attention back to Emily.

“How about you, kid?” he asked, offering her another bar. The girl’s eyes were wide open with an envious look, and after an obvious internal fight, she finally extended her hand towards Dean. “There you go,” Dean smiled, while giving her the chocolate. She devoured it almost as hungrily as Castiel. “Better than hospital food, huh?”

Emily nodded.

“So how you ended up in the street?” Dean asked, casually. “You looked like you’ve had a rough deal.”

Emily said nothing, and avoided Dean’s gaze by toying with the wrappers like they were the most interesting thing in the world.

“You need to take better care of yourself,” Dean continued. “I mean, you can just run around with a gun and expect it to solve all your problems. Especially if you don’t even know how to take off the safety.”

Castiel choked on the candy bar.

“So I was never in real danger?” he asked, both irritated and confused.

“We’ll talk about that later, Cas,” Dean cut him off, and turned his attention back to Emily. He gave her another candy bar, but the girl didn’t peel it off. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say anything, Em. Can I call you Em? Detective Martinez is going to call your dad and…”

That earned him a reaction. Emily’s hand shot up to grab Dean’s arm so tight it might have cut his circulation.

“Please, no!” she said. “You said I didn’t have to go back! Don’t make me go back home to _him_!”

“Okay, that’s okay, kid,” Dean said, patting her hand to calm her. “Can I ask you why?”

Emily lowered her eyes, at the verge of tears.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” she said.

“I believe all sort of crazy things. Ask Cas, here,” said Dean, trying to smile like the terror in the girl’s face wasn’t all too familiar to him. “You can tell us, Emily.”

Emily hesitated, and Dean knew, right away, that she was struggling against one of the best kept secrets of her life.

“Is it your dad?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” said Emily, in a broken whisper. “But he would have… if it wasn’t for Georgie.”

“That’s her older brother,” Castiel pointed.

“Yes, I know, Cas,” said Dean, afraid that the interruption might hold back Emily’s confession. But now that the girl had started, she couldn’t stop. She had been keeping it inside for too long.

“After mom died, Georgie…” said Emily. “He made sure I went to school, and ate my breakfast, and… he read me _Peter Pan_ when I was sick, and…”

“He took care of you,” Dean pointed. He hadn’t realized he was clenching his jaw so tight until he actually tried to speak.

“He said… he had to do it because dad was very sad,” Emily said, hiccoughing among her tears. “And… I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he did to George. He always hid it. He said he’d ran into a door, or stumbled on the stairs, or gotten a fight at school. And then when he got older, he’d had these really loud arguments with dad… and…”

She swallowed, and Dean squeezed her hand in encouragement.

“Then, on Halloween, we were supposed to go to a party,” Emily told them. “I was so excited, because it was my first high school party. But dad didn’t like my outfit. It was just a… a silly Wendy outfit, you know, like a nightgown… but he threw a fit. Georgie told me to go on my way, that he would be right behind me, so I took the bike, and I left but… something was wrong, I could just tell.”

“So you came back before making it to the party,” Dean guessed.

“Mom’s old mirror was broken,” said Emily. “And there was blood everywhere. I asked dad what happened, and he said Georgie had punched the mirror, and that he had ran away. That he wouldn’t be coming back. But I knew he was lying, he had to be…”

“Because George would’ve never left you behind,” said Dean. “He would have taken you with him.”

Emily nodded, the stream of tears falling down her cheeks even more copious now. Dean heard Castiel moving around the room, but didn’t understand what he was doing until the angel handed Emily a box of tissues.

“Then, later that night… Georgie did come back,” said Emily, after blowing her nose. “He said he’d found a place where I would be safe… that if I stayed Dad would hurt me… so I went with him, but… he was…”

“He wasn’t himself,” Dean guessed.

After a long pause and a couple of deep sobs, Emily confessed:

“George was dead. He told me dad had killed him, but it was okay, because that way he could always take care of me,” she said. “And the other kids. Their parents hurt them like our dad hurt George, but my brother helped them… he got them out of there… we were all together, like the Lost Boys of Neverland… George said we could all be a family, and…”

There was a commotion in the hallway, and then a familiar voice came flowing from the other side of the door.

“Where’s my daughter? I want to see my girl!”

Emily’s grip on Dean’s arm became even tighter, and the dread in her face was almost painful.

“It’s _him_ ,” she muttered.

“That’s alright, Em,” Dean said, reassuringly. “We won’t let him hurt you, okay?”

Emily shivered, and Castiel had an alarmed expression on his face.

“Dean,” he tried to say.

“Not now, Cas,” answered Dean. There was a hot, blind rage boiling in his blood, and maybe that prevented him from noticing just how cold the room suddenly was.

“Calm down, Mr. Bloom,” Detective Martinez was saying. “She is currently being interrogated…”

“Interrogated?!” Bloom sounded indignant. “With whose permission?”

“Mr. Bloom…!”

Before Detective Martinez could add another word, the door burst opened and Bloom (his glasses lopsided and his face red with anger) barged in, followed by the detective.

“Emily!” he roared, and maybe Dean was wrong, but he didn’t sound exactly utterly pleased to see her. “Where have you been?”

Emily shifted, trying to hide behind Dean. Detective Martinez closed the door on the faces of a couple of overly curious nurses.

“Hey, there,” Bloom smiled, and took a step towards her. “Hey, baby…”

“Mr. Bloom,” Dean began. His voice was shaky from all the screaming he was biting back. “I’m going to need you to leave this room…”

“Dean,” Castiel called again, but Dean paid no heed. He’d just got engaged in a pretty intense staring contest with Bloom, which prevented him from noticing the windows had gone all foggy.

“You’re not going to stop me from seeing my daughter!” Bloom screamed. “Come on, Emily, I’m taking you home!”

“You’re not taking her anywhere!” Dean roared.

Bloom opened her mouth like he was about to scream something right back at him, when the lights on the room flickered. Everyone went quiet for just a fraction of a second. Dean felt Emily’s squeeze on his arm tightening.

“Georgie…” she muttered.

Bloom was suddenly propelled out of the room, like a wrecking ball had just hit him square on the chest. The man landed against a trolley on the hallway wall outside, spreading the contents over the floor with a loud clatter. His glasses flew down the hall, and Bloom stood up with an outraged expression on his eyes.

“What did you do?!” he spat at Dean, his eyes practically popping out.

Before had any chance to answer, Bloom’s head began swinging left and right. His cheeks get bruised and his nose started bleeding, as someone kept delivering invisible punches to his face, one after the other with no intentions of stopping until the man had been beaten to a bloody pulp.

Dean would have gladly let it continue if it wasn’t for Emily.

“Stop! Please, make it stop!”

Both Dean and Castiel ran towards him, but Castiel reached was faster: he reached for something in the trolley’s mess, and a second later, a cloud of white powder was flying towards Bloom. There was an ear-splitting shriek echoing on the hallway. The figure of a boy with his hands extended over his face defensively blinked in front of them, and then promptly vanished in thin air.

The whole thing couldn’t have lasted a minute, but there was already a crowd of nurses and policemen swarming the hallway.

“What the hell just happened here?!” asked Detective Martinez, her opened wide in surprise. She had taken her gun out, but she had clearly hesitated to shoot, because there was nothing to shoot at.

Castiel and Dean exchanged looks over Bloom’s unconscious body, unsure what to do.

The saddest, most heartbreaking sound interrupted their wordless conversation: Emily was crying, hiding her face in her hands.


	5. Neverland

It took twenty minutes to convince the hospital staff Mr. Bloom had stumbled on the trolley and gotten his face hurt by landing on it, and about half an hour to explain the situation to Detective Martinez.

“A ghost?” she repeated for the twelfth time. “Are you shitting me?”

Dean sighed and patted Emily on the shoulder. She had finally stopped crying, and now was holding onto Dean’s arm with an apathetic and tired expression on her face. That kid had been through so much bullshit already, and Dean wasn’t about to let her go through any more.

“You might doubt it all you want, detective,” he said, tiredly. “But if you think about it, you’ll know it makes sense. How else could the murder enter the victim’s houses? How else could someone kill all those people in such a messy way without leaving any prints or DNA?”

“Stop!” Emily shouted, suddenly moving away from him. “Georgie didn’t kill anybody! He couldn’t have! He’s not like that!”

“I’m sorry, Emily,” Castiel intervened, and by how sad his eyes looked when they fell on the girl, it was clear that he truly meant it. “Your brother’s violent actions will only keep escalating, and he’ll end up hurting someone without meaning to…”

“You don’t know him!” Emily replied, her face red with anger. “How can say that about him?”

“Emily…”

“Leave me alone!”

She covered her ears with her face, like doing that would keep out all the accusations against her brother. And just like that, Dean understood the trust he had tried to build for her had been completely crashed.

“Okay,” he said, standing up to give her some space. “Okay, Emily. We’ll leave now, but we’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

He gestured Castiel and Detective Martinez to follow him. They both threw reluctant looks at Emily, who was now stubbornly facing the wall, but in the end, they went with Dean, who closed the door behind them. Detective Martinez rubbed her temples and then looked up at Dean again.

“Let’s say I believe you,” she said. “Let’s say it’s true the ghost of that girl’s brother has killed all those people. How do we even…? I mean, is there a way for…?” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. When she looked up, she was again the stern, dedicated detective they’ve met a few days before. “How do we stop him?”

“We need to find his body and burn it,” Castiel said. In another occasion, Dean might have glared at him to warn him about his absolute lack of tact, but Dean figured the time for subtlety had passed.

Detective Martinez didn’t look convinced.

“We can’t do that.”

“It’s the only way…”

“We can’t do that, because if what Emily’s saying is true, then her brother was the victim of a murder,” Detective Martinez explained. “His body might be the only evidence we have to put that bastard that called himself their father away.”

“I know,” Castiel sighed. “And it’s a tough call, but it’s the only way to stop the bloodbath.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t stop the bloodbath,” Dean commented under his breath. Both Castiel and Detective Martinez turned to look at him with eyes wide by surprise. “I’m just saying; I hardly see anyone lamenting these assholes’ deaths…”

“Dean,” Castiel said, taking a step to stand directly in front of the hunter. “You saw what he did to Gary’s mother. He’s just going to keep escalating. How long do you think it will take before he hurts one of the children he took away?”

Dean clenched his jaw. Castiel was right, but he didn’t like it.

“Is there any way you can build a case without the body?” he asked Detective Martinez.

“It won’t be easy,” she said. “And it might even be useless in the end. He might not get convicted and…”

Her voice trailed off, like the consequences of that were almost too hard to contemplate.

“And?” Dean urged her.

“It might mean Emily will have to live with him until she’s of age,” Detective Martinez continued.

So those were basically the choices: a ghost growing increasingly out of control, or leaving a little girl abandoned to her luck, hoping her abusive father wouldn’t hurt her too much for knowing he had done her brother in. That was just great. Actually, it wasn’t great; it was the exact opposite of great. Why couldn’t things ever be easy?

Dean started pacing around in the hall, ready to punch or scream at whatever next awful thing happened. Castiel seemed to perceive that it was best to let him fume for a minute before he spoke again:

“In any case, we don’t know where George’s body is.”

“No,” Detective Martinez shook her head. “There were search parties when he and all the other kids went missing, but nothing turned up. If Bloom hid his body, he did an upstanding job at it.”

“Yeah,” Dean muttered. “Well, we know someone who knows for sure, don’t we?”

Before either Detective Martinez or Castiel could stop him, he walked down the hall and burst inside Bloom’s room.

The man looked awful: his face was bloated and bruised, and even though they had cleaned up the blood from his nose, it still looked red and slightly misplaced. His eyes darted in Dean’s direction the moment he came into the room.

“I will _sue_ you,” he threatened him. “I don’t know how you did this, but this is _your_ fault and…”

“Shut up,” Dean groaned. He grabbed the chair for visitors and dragged it next to Bloom’s bed.

“Dean,” Castiel called from the door. “What are you going to do?”

“Close the door, Cas,” he said. “And if you want to wait outside, detective, no one will blame you.”

Detective Martinez looked at them both, and then walked out of the room. Castiel hesitated a moment longer, but in the end he obeyed Dean’s orders.

“Alright, you son of a bitch,” Dean said, as he slowly rolled over the sleeves of his shirt. “Do you want to tell us where your son is?”

Bloom was obviously not expecting that, because his red face went pale.

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stuttered, and recovered his angry, confident tone once more. “If somebody knows, it’s Emily. Those two were always close, if she ran away, he must have…”

Dean grabbed his broken nose and squeezed. Bloom shook his arms in the air, letting out a nasal whimper that would have been funny in other circumstances.

“Where is your son?” Dean asked. His tone sounded calm, but Castiel knew better to recognize the fury boiling underneath. He moved closer, in case he had to intervene.

“I don’t know!” Harold Bloom shouted. “The kid was always a troublemaker, and yes, sometimes I had to discipline him, but I never thought he would convince his sister of…”

Dean grabbed his nose again. “Wrong answer, pal,” he said, twisting slightly.

Bloom shrieked and glared at Dean. “What kind of agents are you?”

“The kind you can’t mess around with,” Dean groaned. “Now, we know that you’re scumbag. We know what you did to George. So you better tell us where you hid his body, before I lose what little is left of my patience.”

Bloom seemed to shrink at the mention of the word “body”, like he still thought he could cheat the detectives if he just denied long and hard enough what had happened.

“I want a lawyer,” he said. “And a deal.”

“Tough,” Dean replied. This time, he grabbed Bloom’s finger and started bending it backwards very slowly. Bloom cried out in pain, but Dean didn’t let go. “I told you, pal. You can’t negotiate with us.”

“Dean,” Castiel intervened taking a step backwards.

“What do you say, Harold?” Dean asked, completely ignoring his partner. “Are you going to continue to be a coward, or are you going to do right for your kids just this once?”

Bloom’s finger continued to move backwards, and the man kept shouting for it to stop. Someone was knocking on the door, demanding to know what was going on there.

“Dean!” Castiel shouted.

Dean ignored him. He kept pulling until a loud crack echoed around the room. Bloom howled, and tried to punch Dean, but the hunter stopped his fist in the air effortlessly.

“Do you feel like talking already?” he asked, still in that falsely calm tone. “Because I have nine more fingers to go if you don’t.”

“There’s a cabin!” Bloom yelled. “A cabin, in the woods north of my house. There… I put him there. I… was going to burn him. Once winter had passed, I was going to…”

“What is going on in there?” Detective Martinez shouted.

Castiel considered Dean had got all the answers he could get and opened the door. Detective Martinez and a couple of flustered nurses ran inside. Dean was standing up, straightening his tie like nothing had happened.

“We know where George’s body is,” he announced. “Let’s roll.”

“Agent!” Detective Martinez screamed. “Agent, stop.”

“We have no time to lose!” Dean replied.

“I don’t know what kind of agents you are, but I cannot condone…”

“Dean,” Castiel called, interrupting the argument. “We have other problems.”

He was standing on the door of the room they had been at not ten minutes ago. The candy wrappers of the bars they had offered Emily were still on the floor.

But the girl was nowhere to be found.

 

* * *

 

Emily stopped once more to look over her shoulder. She had been doing that regularly since she had left the hospital because she had the uneasy feeling somebody was following her. However, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual, and when she reached the path that crossed the woods, she knew she was safe: no one could follow her there unless they went on foot, and then she could probably hear them the leaves rustling or the branches breaking under her feet.

After a while, she took a turn that lead her away from the path and pedaled for a couple of feet more, until the ground became too rocky and uneven for her bicycle. At that point, she stopped near her usual hiding spot, laid the bike carefully on the ground and made sure it was well covered in branches before continuing her way.

The small, decadent cabin was well-hidden among the trees, and not for the first time, Emily wondered who would have built it. It was obviously abandoned the first night she got there. There was nothing but some old, creaky furniture and cobwebs and dust everywhere. She had tried her best to keep it clean and organized, but there was only so much a thirteen year old girl could do, given the circumstances. She remembered she’d cried the first night she spent there. She missed her home, she missed her bed, and, most of all, she missed her brother’s voice assuring her everything would be fine.

The hoot came when she could already see the cabin ahead. To anyone, it would have sounded like an owl crying out to the night, but Emily knew better. She put her hands around her mouth to form an improvised speaker, and she hooted back twice. She waited, and then she hooted again three times. Another hoot answer her, and Emily finally stepped into the clearing where the cabin was.

“What took you so long?” asked Simon as soon as he saw her. He was carrying the old lamp they had found inside the cabin, with one of their precious candles burning inside to give him light.

“Something happened,” Emily said.

“Did you get the food?”

“Some,” Emily said, but shook her head. “Come on, let’s go back inside so I can tell everybody.”

Inside of the cabin, there was a rumpus when the others saw her walk in.

“Emi!” shouted Missy as she ran towards her and wrapped her arms around her waist. “You’re back!”

“I am,” Emily said, smiling down at the little girl. She was the youngest of the group, and also had been the first to arrive. For some reason, she looked up to Emily the same way she had looked up to George, and there was nothing she feared more in the world than letting her down.

“We were worried,” Katie said, putting her hands on her waist and looking at Emily like a scolding mom.

“No, we weren’t,” replied Kyle, her brother. “We knew Emily would be back.”

“Emi, did you bring food?” asked Missy, blinking with her big eyes.

Emily sighed and took off her hoodie. She passed them the plastic salvers she managed to steal from the hospital. There were only three, and she had unilaterally decided they should be for the younger children. She, Gary and Simon would have to go hungry for another night.

“Don’t wolf it all down,” Emily reminded them.

“Give me that,” Katie said, snatching the salver from her brother’s hands. “We’re going to sit on the table and eat like we’re not animals of the forest.”

“You’re no fun,” Kyle protested.

As the kids made sure to do that, Emily went into the kitchen. It didn’t have running water, so they kept the one the extracted from the streams a few feet down the path there. Of course, they made sure to boil it before taking a sip, but Emily knew it was a matter of time before one of them came down with some sort of sickness.

And then, what would they do?

“You look tired,” Gary commented when he saw her walk in. He was putting one of the pots they had for water over their improvised fire over the kitchen oven.

Emily didn’t answer right away. She actually felt exhausted, but she had to keep up a good face, so she just smile and went to find a glass that wasn’t that dirty. While she was pouring the water, Simon walked into the kitchen too.

“Emily, the kids are saying that’s all the food you brought,” he said, frowning. “And where is the gun?”

Emily sighed and gulped down the water.

“I don’t have it,” she confessed.

She went on to tell them what it had happened to her: how they had caught her in the store, the hospital trip, how her father had almost found her and how Georgie had stopped him from seeing her. (They knew about Georgie, of course they did. He had rescued them all). She omitted the strange FBI agents that had believed her, because she still didn’t know what to make of them. By the time she finished, Gary and Simon both looked worried.

Emily straightened her back. She was the older one, and therefore, they all looked up to her to keep things ordered around there. Gary and Simon, who were almost her age, had helped her out a lot since they arrived, but ultimately, it was Emily who was in charge of everything.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” she said, faking a confidence she didn’t feel. “They’re never going to find this place. They’re not going to take us back, ever.”

It was a promise she had repeated whenever a new kid arrived, and most of them seemed all too happy to believe her. They didn’t talk about the things they’d been through by a tacit agreement that those lives were over, and nobody wanted to remember them. Same way they didn’t talk about the room upstairs and why it sometimes leaked black goo. They limited themselves to clean the stains. Emily had learned than whenever that happened, another kid would be showing up soon. She would always promise them they didn’t have to get back.

But when she said that now, she felt like the words had fallen flat on her friends. Simon and Gary exchanged a look.

“Emi, we know you’re trying your best,” said Gary, shyly. “But we can’t stay here forever.”

“Yeah, what happens if someone else arrives?” Simon asked. “There’s barely enough space for all of us as it is, and we can’t go up the second floor.”

The firm tone in which he said those words made Emily think they had discussed that while she was gone. She would have got angry if she hadn’t been so weary from the day’s events. So instead, she got what her father denominated “passive-aggressive.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, crooking an eyebrow. “Anything else?”

Gary took a step backwards, but Simon obviously didn’t understand sarcasm.

“We need to find a way to fix the roof,” he said. “Remembered what happened the last time it rained? And what happens when winter comes? What if it snows? It’ll get really cold in here.”

“Well, we’ll just have to get some extra blankets,” Emily said, shrugging, though internally she was cringing. They barely had money for food. If they wanted blankets, she would have to steal them, and risk being caught again.

“Emi…” Simon started again.

“Look, we’ll figure it out, okay?” Emily said.

That was something Georgie used to say, and when he did, she believed him. But now that she had to say it more and more, she was beginning to think maybe her brother had no idea what he was doing half of the time. And she didn’t want to resent him for bringing her Simon and Gary, because they were both smart and helpful and took care of the three younger ones when she had to run for groceries, but it was all so much easier when it was just her, Missy and the twins. To them, all of this was like a big adventure, a never-ending pajama party in a place they felt safe and understood. To them, this was Neverland.

To Gary and Simon, it was a problem after the other, and she wasn’t sure how to fix them at all. So she decided the most effective way to shut down the argument was with a low blow:

“Or would you rather go back home?”

They both visibly shivered. Emily knew perfectly they would choose this freezing, run-down cabin any day before having to back to those places. She would, too, and she was a monster for mentioning it. But before she could apologize, Katie got inside the kitchen:

“The food is served,” she announced with all the dignity of a housewife that welcomed her guests to a dinner party. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she insisted when the three older kids stayed in their place, too stunned to move. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Simon was the first to move, followed by Gary and Emily. Missy and Kyle were sitting on the table (actually just an unstable wooden plank they had installed over four abandoned paint cans they had found in the cabin). The food Emily had stolen from the hospital was super scarce, but Katie had managed to divide it in six equally tiny portions in each one of the plates.

“Katie, you didn’t have to…” Emily started.

“Have you washed your hands?” Katie inquired, throwing them a severe look. “You can start eating unless you’ve washed your hands.”

Her grown-up tone was so serious, that Emily couldn’t help the beam that escaped her lips.

“No, we haven’t,” she admitted. “Give us a sec.”

They went back to the kitchen and emerged five seconds later, rubbing their hands in their clothes like they wanted to dry them. They couldn’t waste water in that kind of things, so it was better to make believe Katie that they actually care about hygiene.

The girl seemed happy, because she nodded and allowed to take their seats. Kylie extended his hand to grab a piece of bread.

“Not yet!” Missy scolded him, hitting his hand so he would stop. “We have to say grace!”

“Oh, come on,” Kyle complained, but he still held Missy and his sister’s hands, who in turned took Emily’s hand. She softly elbowed Simon and Gary so they would do the same. Emily took a deep breath. As the older one, it was always her duty to say grace, but lately it was hard to find things to be thankful for, so she turned to Missy.

“Do you want to say it?”

Missy’s little face lightened up like a candle in the dark, and then she got all serious again.

“Lord, we thank you for this food we’re about to it,” she said, in her most solemn voice. “And thank you for Emily, who brought it to us. And thank you for letting us stay here, all together, and safe. Amen.”

Emily looked away for a moment, and she hoped none of the others had noticed her eyes had got all teary for a moment.

“Now we can eat?” Kyle insisted.

“Now we can eat,” Katie nodded.

Emily couldn’t help but to smile at the way Simon passed his food onto Missy’s plate when she wasn’t looking, or the way Kyle picked the bread apart so everyone could have some, or Gary made sure they all drank enough water because dehydration was dangerous and besides, it would help dissimulate how miserable their dinner had really been.

But that seemed secondary in the spirit of companionship, and the jokes, and the laughter that accompanied them. Emily sighed in relief. At least for that night, Neverland remained safe.


	6. Close to Home

Missy’s breathing had finally become profound and regular. The girl usually was a restless sleeper who couldn’t close her eyes unless someone was holding her. Once, when they were only the two of them, she had told Emily that she didn’t like to sleep alone in her bed because that was “when Grandpa did bad things”. She’d immediately put both her hands over her mouth, like she’d just revealed a terrible secret, and she had tearfully refused to talk for two days after that.

Emily’s heart broke every time she thought about what the others had gone through. When compared to them, she felt like she had no right to complain. Yes, life at home had been tense and difficult at times, and there had been the occasional plate thrown against the wall in fury, but her father had never laid a hand on her. All that rage had been reserved for Georgie.

Almost as if thinking about him had invoked him, she felt the temperature of the room drop slightly. Her breath materialized in front of her eyes as she subtly pulled her arm from underneath Missy’s little head and tiptoed outside the cabin, where she always held her talks with Georgie, away from the prying ears of the others.

The night was cold and dark, and Emily hugged herself in order to gain some heat. If the cabin had had windows, the glasses would probably have been misty. The woods, that a second before had been flooded with the fluttering of wings from owls and the singing crickets, were gravely silent now.

Emily waited.

In the darkness surrounding her, her brother’s figure materialized.

Emily suppressed a shudder. It was always difficult to see Georgie now. In life he had been slim, but now he looked practically skeletal, like his skin was glued to his bones with nothing in between. He was pale and there was an ugly, black bloodstain on the side of his head she always tried not to look at. His eyes were empty and seemed to look through her, when before they had shone with never-ending optimism.

Sometimes, it was hard for her to recognize her brother in that specter, but when he curved his lips up, she still thought she saw a little bit of him, of the person he had been. Even if, like everything else, it was only a vanishing shadow of the smiles George used to show her.

“Georgie,” she said to the apparition. “Simon and Gary are worried.”

She told him all about the valid points the boys had brought up. George stood there, silent and transparent and so fragile it occurred to her that only a breeze would be enough to blow him away.

“Well, what do you think we should do?” she asked, several seconds after she finished her monologue.

George didn’t answer.

Ever since he had come back, Georgie had only pronounced a handful of words, some of them so low Emily wasn’t even sure she had heard him right. Lately, his speech had become just a series of growls and whispered, laconic words. That wasn’t the same boy who used to tell her stories to get her to sleep, and he was changing right before her eyes, but with childish naivety, Emily refused to believe there was anything wrong with her brother. Yes, being dead couldn’t be easy, but Georgie was still taking care of her, like he’d promised he would. And he would always be.

“I know you said you wanted to protect them like you protected me,” Emily said. “But this is getting out of control, George. I know you want to keep helping other kids, but you have to stop. You saw those FBI agents? They knew about you. And they said… they said terrible things,” she added. “Georgie, you didn’t hurt anybody, did you?”

George still didn’t answer, but something in his face had distorted. It was only a flash, and later Emily wouldn’t even be sure she saw it, but in that moment, it made her take a step backwards in fear. George had frowned and clenched his jaw the same. Almost exactly the way their father did right before throwing something against the wall.

“I-I’m sorry,” Emily stuttered. “Of course I didn’t believe them. You wouldn’t…”

Her words died in her mouth. George’s figure flickered and disappeared.

Emily was alone, more alone that she had ever been in her life, and with a big lump in her throat that she couldn’t undo by swallowing. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She had to be strong. The others needed her.

She headed back to the cabin, thinking maybe when the winter came they could back to the town. Not with the adults, of course, but maybe they could find an abandoned house or a building that would protect them from the rain. Maybe it would be easier for them to get food. Perhaps she could lie about her age and get a job somewhere…

She had been so lost in her thoughts she almost didn’t see the man hiding near the door until he took a step towards her.

“Emily,” he said.

She recognized his voice. It was the FBI agent from the hospital, the one who had offered her the candy bars.

Despite that, she took a step backwards in fear.

“Emily, listen to me,” he said. He advanced towards her with his hands in the air. “I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I’m just here to look for George.”

That set all the alarms off in Emily’s mind.

“Why?” she asked. “What are you going to do to him?”

He hesitated, and that was when Emily decided that whatever was going to come out of his mouth next would be a lie. If he really was there just for George, then he would have answered straight away.

“George is not himself, okay?” he said. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but he’s hurt people. And we have to make him stop.”

Emily took another step backwards. A branch cracked underneath her foot.

“No,” she muttered. “No, you get away from me!”

And like those words had invoked him, George materialized right in between them, both arms extended shielding Emily with his body just like he had done when he was alive. He shouted, a loud, acute shriek that pierced through Emily’s ears and seem to perforate her skull. She wanted to run away then, so she wouldn’t have to see what was about to happen, but she was rooted to her spot.

There was a shot, and Emily screamed again, covering her ears as her brother vanished in thin air. The agent fell on the ground, gasping for air with his hands on his throat.

Someone put a hand on Emily’s shoulder, making her jump. The other FBI agent from earlier was standing next to her, holding a shotgun that looked like it had been taken out from a romantic period film.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Emily was shaking so violently her knees almost gave in. The agent held her by the elbow to help her keep her balance.

“What’s going on?” Gary’s voice came from somewhere behind them. “We heard a shot!”

Emily’s brain finally started to catch up with everything that was going on. There was another adult besides the angets: one short woman with too many shawls around her neck. They were all holding the same ridiculous shotguns.

“You shot Georgie!” Emily accused them, not sure who really had taken the shot and not caring. She escaped from the agent’s grip and decidedly went to stand in front of the cabin, like her being there would somehow prevent those meddling adults from seeing the other five children standing in the doorway or stop them from taking them back to their homes.

“Rock salt,” the agent explained. “It can’t hurt him, but it can make him go away for a little while. Emily, we need to talk.”

 

* * *

 

A scared bunch of bunnies. That was the impression Emily and her group of Lost Boys (and Girls) gave Dean. A group of little bunnies gathering up very close to one another, and staring at the three adults that had suddenly burst into what seemed to be their new home with wide, terrified eyes.

After the first few seconds of stunned silence had passed, one of the older boys (Dean recognized him as Simon, the boy that had originally brought them to town), took a step forwards and looked at him with clenched fists.

“You’re not taking us back!” he declared. “You can’t! We’re staying right here…”

“Simon,” Dean kneeled on the floor just to be at the same height as they were. “Your dad can’t hurt you anymore, okay? None of the people who hurt you can’t touch you.”

“They don’t?” asked the Harrow girl.

“Don’t believe him,” her brother shushed her. “That’s what adults always do. They lie.”

Something in his tone was so aggressively adult that it broke Dean’s heart. Underneath the fear, there was a lot of barely contained anger, and it was clear they were on the edge of giving up to him. He had to be very careful now.

“I’m not lying,” he guaranteed. “But it’s very dangerous for you to stay here.”

“For what? Georgie?” Emily intervened. She had both her arms wrapped protectively around the youngest girl’s shoulders. “He would never hurt us.”

She seemed absolutely sure, but Dean saw an expression of skepticism flashing across Gary’s face.

“Maybe not,” Dean said. “But he has hurt other people, Emily. You can’t keep refusing to believe that.”

“No…”

“What do you need to know?” asked Gary suddenly. Everyone turned around towards him. Simon and Emily had their mouth agape, and the Harrow twins took a step away, like his sudden betrayal disgusted them. “I’m sorry, guys, but he’s right. We don’t know what George is capable of.”

“Where is George?” Dean asked. “His body, where is it?”

“I don’t know!” Emily said. “Not here! He could have put anywhere!”

She didn’t need to clarify who she was talking about.

“How did you find this place, Emily?” Dean asked, in a soothing tone.

“I told you, Georgie brought me here…”

“And how did he know about this place?” Dean asked. “Did he ever mention it to you before he died? Did he ever talk about it at all?”

Emily went quiet, and Dean knew he had hit the nail.

“There’s a second floor,” Gary informed them.

“Shut up!” Emily snapped. Missy started quietly crying, with her face against Emily’s jeans.

“We can’t go up because the stair is almost rotting,” Gary continued, ignoring the looks of betrayal of his friends. “But sometimes we hear noises up there, noises no rat could make. And sometimes there’s this black ooze dripping between the floor boards. It’s really disgusting.”

“Ectoplasm,” Castiel said.

“That’s where George is, isn’t it?” Dean asked, standing up again.

“I don’t know!” Emily repeated, but by the way her eyes were opening, it was clear it was dawning on her she couldn’t keep refusing.

“We need to get these children out of here,” Detective Martinez said. “Then we can come back with a ladder.”

Simon step backwards and they closed ranks again, even Gary. It was easier said than done.

“Listen, I know you’re afraid,” Dean told them. “But believe it or not, your families miss you. Gary, your dad is really worried. And so are your moms,” he added, looking at the twins and Missy.

“And what about me?” Simon asked, angrily. “Nobody’s worried about me.”

“Simon, we’ve been tracking your mom,” said Detective Martinez. “We found her and told her what happened. She’s coming back here for you.”

Simon’s eyes opened wide, but his expression was hesitant, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe them.

“No!” Emily cried, angry tears streaming down her face. “No, you can’t separate us! We’re a family!”

She hadn’t even finished saying it when George appeared again. Dean didn’t see him, but he heard Castiel shouting his name right before an invisible force lifted him up in the air and brusquely shoved him against a tree. An acute pain rushed through his skull and his vision was darkened by black spots everywhere. His shotgun slipped from his hand, so he couldn’t even try to shoot blindly when the ghost attacked him again.

A pale fist that smelled of earth and rotten wood crashed against his the face. Dean’s head bounced against the tree’s trunk, so not only was his vision full of black spots and his ears buzzed, but he also felt the back of his skull vibrating uncomfortably. A second hit went straight against his mouth before he could put his hands up to protect himself. Dean’s teeth chattered painfully against one another, and his mouth was filled with the metallic taste of blood. The third hit reached him on the ribs, knocking the air out of him. He coughed, with everything around him suddenly spinning.

The rock salt hit him on the shoulder, like he needed another injure to add to the list. He was barely aware there were people screaming, and through his bloated eyes, he saw someone (too short to be either Cas or Detective Martinez) running towards him.

“Stay back!”

“Stop!”

The ghost turned around so suddenly than whoever it was that was running towards them flew through the air, away from them.

“Emily!” a little voice shouted, very far away from him.

The attack stopped. Dean fell on the ground like a rag doll, trying to catch his breath. George was standing over him, paralyzed, his eyes opening wide in horror, his jaw hanging open. He stared at his hands, horrified, and then his figure flickered and disappeared.

“Dean!” Cas’ voice reached Dean’s ears, but it was faint, like his friend was screaming at him from miles away. “Dean, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dean tried to offer him a bloody smile, but the truth was that he was pissed off and in pain. That ghost was crossing too many lines to his liking. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve had it worse.”

He managed to look up through his good eye (the other one was beginning to swell), and he saw Detective Martinez, leaning next to Emily and helping her stand up. Gary was standing protectively in front of the other children, holding the shotgun up and looking everywhere like he expected the ghost to jump at them at any moment.

Dean leaned on Castiel until his ears stopped buzzing. The fallen angel helped him limp towards the doorway of the cabin.

“You okay, kiddo?” Dean asked.

Emily looked up like she didn’t know how to answer that question. Her wrist was twisted in a weird angle, and there were unshed tears on the edge of her eyes.

“We have to get them out of here,” Detective Martinez said, looking up at Dean. “It’s not safe.”

“Emily!” the same little voice shouted, and Missy came running towards her. She threw her little arms around the older girl’s neck, crying. “Emi!”

Emily swallowed whatever she was about to say, and held Missy closer.

“It’s okay,” she said with a shaky voice. “It’s okay, Missy. It’s nothing.”

“He _hurt_ you!” Missy shouted, horrified. “You… you… you said he wouldn’t!”

“I…” Emily looked around, confused, like she expected someone to instruct her on how to answer to that. But she was just as alone as she had been before. “I… I’m sorry.”

It was heartbreaking to watch: the realization that George wasn’t the hero she thought he was, the sorrow in her face as she figured she wouldn’t be seeing him again, and finally, a fierce decision as she pushed Missy away from her.

“Missy, listen,” she said. “You have to go with the lady now.”

“No!” Missy said, hanging onto Emily’s shirt for dear life. “No, I want to stay here!”

“I know that, sweetie, I know,” Emily said. “But it’s dangerous for you here. You have to be safe. That’s all I ever wanted, okay? For you to be safe.”

Missy sobbed a little louder, but she offered little resistance when Emily gently pushed her in Detective Martinez’s direction. The woman picked up Missy and made a gesture to the other kids.

“Come on,” she told them. “Come on, we have to go now.”

Reluctantly, looking over their shoulders at Emily like they expected a sign from their leader to rebel, the children followed Detective Martinez down the leave-covered path.

Emily stumbled, like the fact her friends weren’t there anymore had made her suddenly weaker.

“Are you alright?” Dean asked, holding her by the elbow.

“Yes,” Emily said, and she wiped her tears with her good hand so fast Dean would later wonder if he ever saw her do that gesture at all. “Yes, I’m fine. We have to do this. That wasn’t George. George would never hurt me.”

It was like she was repeating a mantra. Without waiting for them to answer, she guided them inside the cabin.

Inside, it looked even shabbier if that was possible. There were a bunch of blankets piled up in a corner, and the rests of what must have been a meager dinner resting on an improvised table. Despite the chaotic appearance of it, Dean couldn’t help but to notice the place was clean (as clean as it could be in the middle of the woods anyway), and there was a pile of clothes folded and clean in one place. Emily had been taking good care of those kids, or at least she had been trying to.

The teenager walked towards a chain that dangled from a side, and pulled. The trapdoor above them creaked, but didn’t fall down.

“Allow me,” Castiel said. He grabbed the chains with both hands, and it still took him a couple of seconds for the stairs to unfold.

“He’s up there,” Emily whispered.

Dean move to start climbing, but Castiel put a hand on his shoulder.

“You stay here with her,” he instructed him. “I’ll go.”

Dean wanted to protest, but Castiel was already disappearing through the hole above them. Emily sat down near the blankets and hugged her knees, like she had no idea what to with herself.

And suddenly Dean understood why Castiel wanted him to stay behind. She was traumatized, and the angel probably had no idea how to talk to her.

So Dean sat by her side and put a hand on her shoulder. Emily shuddered, like that simple touch had brought her back to a reality she didn’t want to face.

“All he ever wanted was to protect me,” she muttered, in a broken voice.

“I know,” Dean nodded, comprehensively. “Big brothers are like that.”

“And that’s what got him killed,” Emily answered, almost as if she hadn’t heard Dean’s words. “That’s what turned him into a monster.”

They could hear Castiel moving on top of them, his shoes scratching the fragile wooden floor. After a while, there was a movement and Castiel’s face popped down.

“I think I found him,” he announced. He clumsily climbed down the stairs with a duffel bag over his shoulder, one of those that snob people (people like Harold Bloom, for example) used to carry his golf clubs.

“Let’s go outside,” Dean said, standing up. He meant him and Castiel, but Emily stood up too.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. Before Dean could soften the answer, Castiel spoke:

“We need to cover his remains in salt and burn them. It’s the only way we can free his soul.”

Dean shot him a glare, but Emily nodded.

“Can I help?” she asked, in a mumble. “He’s my brother,” she added, looking at them alternatively, like she thought they would deny her this one last wish.

Once outside, Castiel put the bag down carefully, and they waited for her to make the first movement. Slowly, with trembling fingers, Emily unzipped the bag. Dean suspected what he was going to see before she moved it, but he still was impressed when the George’s head appeared under his flashlight. The side of his skull was sunken unnaturally, and his skin looked darkened and fragile, like it would come apart with one touch to reveal the bones underneath. Emily started crying, covering her face with her hands.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Dean said, holding her against his chest as Castiel began pouring salt and gasoline inside the bag. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

He stopped talking. The temperature around them had dropped suddenly, and he almost didn’t have to move the flashlight to see George’s shadow looming over his own body. He had his arms stretched towards her, in a longing gesture that was almost a plea. Dean had the shotgun in his hand, and his finger twitched on the trigger, but Emily stepped away to face her brother’s ghost.

“George, you understand we have to stop you, right?” she told him. She was clearly still choking back a lot of tears. “You told me you never wanted to be like Dad. You said you wanted to be better. But look at what you’re doing. This isn’t you, George.”

George disappeared and reappeared next to Emily. Both Dean and Castiel raised their shotguns, but neither shoot.

“Please, Georgie,” Emily continued. “You’re losing yourself. I know you were trying to help, but you have to stop.”

George grabbed a single lock of Emily’s hair.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You did everything you could for me. I’ll be okay, and so will the others. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

There was a pause, a second of silence in which the world seemed to stand still. Then George nodded.

Castiel took out the lighter, and passed it to Emily. There were no more words needed.

Emily had troubled turning it on, but she didn’t ask for their help to do it. In the end, she managed to produce a flimsy flame, and instead of throwing the lighter, she kneeled next to the duffel bag and waited for the fire to start eating it.

The same fire appeared on George’s chest, the sparkles eating away him away slowly. Dean had seen many ghosts go: some of them screamed, some of them looked at him with fury in their eyes as they burned away. But he thought he saw – just for a second, or a fraction of a second before he was gone – he thought he saw George’s eyes alive and bright instead of dead. He thought he saw him smiling.

Then there was nothing left, except for the three of them, and a gentle fire crackling in the autumn night.


	7. Epilogue

“So what happens to her now?” Dean asked.

The entry of the woods was full of sirens and lights flashing blue and red. Emily was sitting on the back of an ambulance, with a blanket over her shoulders, watching as his friends were picked one by one by their parents. The kids looked reluctant to go back. Missy, especially, had broken in tears and told her mother she wanted to stay with Emily. It had been difficult to watch.

“It’s hard to say,” Detective Martinez responded. “With George’s body gone, there’s not much evidence we can use against Bloom.”

“Come on, there has to be something,” Dean insisted.

Detective Martinez sighed.

“Look, I’m going to try and make sure he doesn’t see Emily again,” she said. “We’ll find her a good foster home, someplace where she’s safe. But if he’s found innocent, then he could reclaim his daughter’s custody. He’d be in his right.”

“So Emily goes back to her brother’s murderer,” Castiel said. His tone sounded bleak.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Detective Martinez sighed. “I wished everything could be solved as easily as a throwing a rock salt at something.”

Dean didn’t answer. But Castiel noticed how his fist clenched.

“You should probably go,” Detective Martinez continued. “I’m going to have to give a lot of explanations as it is.”

“Dean?” Castiel called.

Dean seemed to snap back to reality.

“Yeah, sure. You go to the motel and pack everything up,” he ordered. “Get some rest. We can leave in the morning.”

“Okay, but where…?”

Dean walked away without answering. Castiel kept his eyes on the hunter’s back until he climbed in the Impala and drove away.

 

* * *

 

Three hours later, Dean stumbled back into the hotel room.

“Cas?” he called out.

The room had been cleared. The wall with all the clues had been disposed of, and their duffle bags were ready waiting over the bed.

Castiel was sitting in front of the TV. He had changed out of his fed clothes and was wearing the jeans and shirt the Winchesters had brought for him. He didn't pay attention to the hunter, too busy talking on the phone.

“Yes. Yes, I understand that. Thank you, Detective.”

He hung up his phone and slowly raised his eyes at Dean.

“That was Detective Martinez,” he informed him. “She said Harold Bloom confessed to murdering his son and burning his body. He begged to take a plea that will put him away from a long time.”

“Huh,” Dean muttered. “Well, that’s good news, I guess. Maybe we should celebrate by watching a movie and sleeping for a while before we leave town.”

He sauntered towards the mini-bar and fetched two beers. When he threw one at Castiel, the fallen angel noticed his bloody knuckles.

“Dean…” he started, but Dean turned on the TV, obviously hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

Castiel tried anyway.

“Detective Martinez also said Harold Bloom’s face was more damaged than it had been earlier,” he continued. “Like someone snuck in his hospital room and roughed him up even further.”

“What? You want me to feel bad for the bastard?” Dean asked, as he popped the cap of his bottle.

“No, of course not,” Castiel muttered.

Dean took a swig of his beer, with his eyes glued to the TV.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Castiel asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“About ‘it’ what?”

“Why this case affected you so much,” Castiel explained. “Why you were so on edge the entire time.”

“Nope,” Dean said, simply. He turned up the volume. Castiel watched the profile of the hunter for another second, and then nodded. He looked at the screen, and several minutes in which the dialogue of the movie was the only sound they heard.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, finally. He had been touching his torn knuckles for a couple of seconds. “You did good out there. You covered my back, you recognized Emily. We can make a hunter out of you still.”

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel said. Dean probably thought he was just saying that, but Castiel really appreciate it a lot.

Dean offered him a tired smile and extended his bottle of beer towards him. Castiel picked up his, to show Dean he already had one and he didn’t have to give him his.

“No, you’re supposed to…”

“Oh!” Castiel understood. “Sorry.”

The bottles clanked and for the first time in days, a little smile appeared on Dean’s face.


End file.
